![Covid-19 is reaching NHCS classrooms. Here’s the case count in your child’s school. [Free read] – Port City Daily](https://www.vaccine.tv/wp-content/themes/lz-real-blog-pro/images/default.png)
New Hanover High has seen the most Covid-19 cases of all the schools, with a total of seven including a new case identified in the last week. (Port City Daily/File)
NEW HANOVER COUNTY With more than 5,500 Covid-19 cases identified in New Hanover County since the pandemic began, it was only a matter of time before the virus reached schools.
During the first three weeks of reopened buildings, 38 cases of Covid-19, both among students and faculty, were identified in New Hanover County Schools. One hundred and thirty-eight people in the districts community have been told since Oct. 12 to undergo precautionary quarantine for exposure at school, including 43 this week.
RELATED: Free Covid-19 tests offered at UNCW through Nov. 24 [Free read]
New Hanover High has seen the most Covid-19 cases of all the schools, with a total of seven including a new case identified in the last week.
The cluster at the high school spawned the second week in Plan B, wherein students are separated into two cohorts. Group A attends in-person classes on Monday and Tuesday, and Group B goes on Thursday and Friday. Wednesday is an at-home learning day for all students. Families were also able to opt for a fully remote option.
On Oct. 20, the school announced a staff member tested positive for Covid-19. The employee had last been in the building Oct. 16.
In the same announcement, the school also revealed a student tested positive and was last on campus Oct. 13.
The week of Oct. 19-23, 77 people at the high school were assigned to quarantine after being exposed to the virus. However, according to the NHCS website, no additional people were placed under quarantine this past week.
In a letter, the principal assured parents that contact tracers identified those who were within 6 feet of the person with or without a mask for more than 15 minutes while they were infectious.
The public can view the number of Covid-19 cases and precautionary quarantines in New Hanover County schools, as well as the central offices, on the NHCS website. The grid is updated weekly on Fridays at 5 p.m.
According to the NHCS website, public health takes individuals out of schools when they experience at least one Covid-19-like symptom. It assigns case-by-case isolation periods that can span up to 24 days, or longer if the person starts showing symptoms during the quarantine.
Below are the numbers of Covid-19 cases reported at schools Oct. 26-30:
ELEMENTARY SCHOOLSBlair 3The International School at Gregory 1Holly Tree 1Johnson Pre-K Center 1Winter Park 2
MIDDLE SCHOOLSHolly Shelter 1Noble 2
HIGH SCHOOLSAshley 1Career Readiness Academy at Mosley 1Hoggard 2Isaac Bear Early College 1Laney 2New Hanover 1Wilmington Early College 1
The World Cities Report 2020, released on Saturday, showcases the value of sustainable urbanization and how it can contribute to global efforts to build back better after the crisis.
The World Cities Report 2020 convincingly affirms that well-planned, managed, and financed cities and towns create economic, social, environmental and other unquantifiable value that can vastly improve the quality of life of all, said Maimunah Mohd Sharif, the UN-Habitat Executive Director.
Urbanization can be leveraged for the fight against poverty, inequality, unemployment, climate change and other pressing global challenges,
Globally, around 55 per cent of all people live in urban areas: a figure that is expected to rise to nearly 70 per cent by 2050, according to the United Nations.
Cities have been at the epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic, UN-Habitat said, with 95 per cent of cases found in urban areas.
The report emphasizes the role of the New Urban Agenda, the UNs 20-year plan for sustainable urbanization, as a road map to achieving sustainable development and combating climate change.
It analyzes the value of urbanization from an economic, social and environmental perspective, as well as what the authors called the unquantifiable value that gives cities their unique character.
When combined, they can drive transformative change, the report argues.
UN-Habitat explained that cities generate economic value when they function efficiently, for example by providing transport options that reduce traffic congestion and shorten travel times, thus allowing for more productive employment.
Environmental value is generated in the case of compact cities that have walkable urban centres, thus leading to a reduction in their overall carbon footprint, the agency added.
Meanwhile, urban policies can reduce social inequalities. Providing housing for low-income residents, or creating safe spaces for marginalized groups such as migrants and LGBTQ+ individuals (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer), are just two examples.
Furthermore, when cities are well-planned and managed, they also create intangible value by instilling civic pride and serving as centres of cultural traditions, the report added.
The UN-Habitat report was launched on World Cities Day, commemorated annually on 31 October.
In his messagemarking the day, UN Secretary-General Antnio Guterres called for putting communities at the heart of the cities of the future.
When urban communities are engaged in policy and decision making, and empowered with financial resources, the results are more inclusive and durable, he said.
UN Habitat underscored that the value of sustainable urbanization can only be unlocked provided that various planning, finance and governance conditions are in place.
The report calls on Governments to create an environment that empowers local authorities to raise revenue, regulate land use, plan for urban growth, limit urban sprawl and relieve overcrowded housing.
Similarly, local governments also should collect revenue to improve municipal services and public spaces.
Dexamethasone in hospitalised patients with COVID-19: addressing uncertainties The Lancet
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg just announced he's giving the entire company off for the Thanksgiving Week, and former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos agrees, somewhat: after fighting the 2020 elections online misinformation threat, technology workers have earned a break.
But a week might be too long, Stamos thinks, before they need to turn their attention to what he sees as the next big social media disinformation battle: Covid-19 vaccine information.
The good news, from his point of view, is that the amount of work that technology companies and the government put into fighting misinformation leading up to Election Day, can be transferred to the war against Covid-19 vaccination lies. The mistake would be not making that transition in full, and quickly.
"A huge amount of work has gone into this election and we can't let that work go to waste on Nov. 4 and no longer be making progress on disinformation," Stamos, who now directs the Stanford Internet Observatory, said at the CNBC Technology Executive Council Summit this week. "And in the U.S., the most critical will be around Covid and vaccines, which we'll start to see hopefully come out next year. The most important disinformation campaigns will be about Covid."
Given the potential severity of the problem, news organizations need to help by getting the headlines right and not unintentionally spread misinformation, he said, in reference to a tweet he recently sent that attracted attention for taking the Washington Post to task for a story about a person dying in a vaccine trial which resulted in confusion over cause of death the subject had been given a placebo, not the experimental vaccine.
"We need to allow scientists to do their jobs and measure the risk, and look at all of the details, and the vaccine issue has become a geostrategic issue," Stamos said.
Several consortiums are tied to governments, and several, for example, to very important companies in China backed by the Chinese Communist Party, which has been positioning its vaccine candidates as chess pieces in the battle for global influence. Russia has multiple vaccine projects underway, including one developed by a biotech company that was once a Soviet era bioweapons laboratory.
"There could be a great amount of interest in saying other companies' vaccines are bad," Stamos said.
"We need the same kind of cooperation ... to go into vaccine safety, and we already have a sub-culture in the U.S. very skeptical and will harass people who push vaccines," Stamos said. "We're in a very dangerous place," he added, referring to the opportunity for a foreign adversary to use misinformation and more targeted propaganda and disinformation to threaten the health of the U.S.
In fact, recent Pew Research survey data shows that there is reason to be concerned about vaccine distrust among a growing segment of the American public, and not just limited to a sub-culture.
A September report from Pew showed that Americans who say they would get vaccinatedfor the coronavirusdeclined by a significant amount over the course of 2020. Half of U.S. adults (51%) told Pew in September they would "definitely or probably" get a vaccine to prevent Covid-19 if it were available, but nearly as many (49%) say they definitely or probablywould notget vaccinated. Overall intent to get a vaccine fell from 72%in May, a 21 percentage point drop. And the share who would"definitely"get a coronavirus vaccine dropped by half to 21%.
A health worker holds blood samples during clinical trials for a Covid-19 vaccine at Research Centers of America in Hollywood, Florida, on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2020.
Eva Marie Uzcategui | Bloomberg | Getty Images
"Everyone at Facebook can take the day off after the election and then on Nov. 5, they need to get back to work at deploying the exact same responses we saw to election disinformation," Stamos said, adding that a Covid war room is a necessity similar to the election war rooms that companies like Facebook have now.
Alexis Wichowski, Deputy CTO for Innovation,New York City Mayor's Office of the CTO, who spoke on the CNBC TEC virtual summit with Stamos, said while federal agencies have the largest reach, absence of trust in the federal government right now requires technology companies to be engaging with state and local governments, as well. "The more local we get the better chance we have to combat vaccine disinformation," she said.
Stamos worries that while it is clear exactly who is in charge of the election disinformation effort within the federal government, including the Department of Homeland Security's CISA unit, created after 2016, and the military's Cyber Command, there is no clear lead agency on Covid misinformation in Washington, D.C.
Facebook should set the goal of four million people getting vaccinated that wouldn't otherwise, just like they registered four million.
Alex Stamos
Stanford Internet Observatory director
One advantage in fighting Covid-19 vaccine misinformation relative to the 2020 election version is that political speech is more difficult to label as fact or fiction than science.
"We have scientific experts with generally accepted truths they can reach," he said.
But Stamos cautioned that even there, the issue is complicated. He cited the early days of the pandemic outbreak in March when the CDC was not advising the public to wear masks, versus a "truly crazy idea" like that the wearing of masks increases the chances of getting Covid-19.
"It's a fast-moving situation and while there are experts ... the opinions of those experts change as research changes."
The technology companies have these policies in place to label misinformation, but it is not easy to do when there is no direct, fixed set of truths. As a society, we need to be careful about asking the intermediaries to censor speech when the "absolute truth" in some situation is not well known yet.
"When you talk about vaccines ... there will be very complicated, conflicting information and we need information centers equivalent to what we had running for the election," Stamos said. "Facebook should set the goal of four million people getting vaccinated that wouldn't otherwise, just like they registered four million," he said.
Pressure to create a coronavirus vaccine is increasing by the day, but for a safe vaccine to enter the market, it takes time. USA TODAY
At least five states California,Nevada, New York, Oregon andWashington and a Black medical group saytheyll conduct independent verification of any COVID-19 vaccines approved by Food and Drug Administration.
These review panels, which began popping up last month,are meant to instill public confidence and counter the political pallcastoverCOVID-19 vaccine development and approval. In recent weeks, faith has improved in the FDA's commitment to base COVID-19 vaccines decisions in science,but the growing number of oversightgroups seekto add another layer of trust.
And while some worry the independent review boards may hurt the effort, all agree establishing that trustis vitally important.A surveythis month found only 58% of Americans said they would get vaccinated as soon as a vaccine became available.
We would like to give Washingtonians the highest confidence that when a COVID-19 vaccine is available that its safe and works, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said of the pact.
The first push for oversightoutside the FDA came Sept. 21, when the National Medical Association announced it would create an expert task force to review any decisions about COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. The association of Black physicians was founded in 1895 at a time when racism in medical groups excluded Black doctors.
"Questions of political influence on scientific process because of Operation Warp Speed (OWS), have threatened the public trust in the FDA that will adversely affect participation in clinical trials, especially in the African-American community," the association said in its announcement.
The first state to launch an oversightgroup was New York, on Sept. 24. At the time there was significant concern in the scientific community the FDA was being pressured by the Trump Administration to approve a vaccine quickly in order to have it available bythe presidential election.
It was an expectation President Trump hasexpressed in tweets, news conferences and during campaign rallies.
"The White House's dispute with the FDA raises serious questions about whether or not the vaccine has become politicized," New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Sept. 24.
"Frankly, I'm not going to trust the federal government's opinion and I wouldn't recommend to New Yorkers based on the federal government's opinion. We're going to put together our own review committee headed by the Department of Health to review the vaccine."
The climate around vaccines began to shift on Sept. 8, when vaccine developers issued a public letter vowing to keep politics out of science. Soon after, and defying White House pressure, the FDA stood firminrequiring at least two months of safety data before a vaccine could be considered for release.
Still, last week,California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the state would create an independent 11-member Scientific Safety Review Workgroupto study the safety of COVID-19 vaccines as an added safeguard to any efforts by the Trump administration to rush the vaccine approval process.
"We don't take anyone's word for it," Newsom said at a news conference announcing the decision. "We will do our own, independently reviewed process with our world-class experts."
On Tuesday,Oregon, Nevadaand Washington, announced they were joining the effort.
"We appreciate the opportunity to join with other western states to help build confidence in a COVID-19 vaccine," said Richard Whitley, director of the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services.
While some experts say the additional verification of FDA decisions may be useful, others worry that at least the state's well-intentioned efforts could cause harm.
Monica Schoch-Spana, a medical anthropologist and scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security,said it makes sense to have input on an approved vaccine from Black physicians because of long-term and systemic racist bias in the health care system.
These are health care practitioners who understand the historical trauma and contemporary and ongoing systemic bias that their Black patients and their families experience, she said. Hearing from leaders in their own communities will be helpful.
Ideally, said Schoch-Spana,more voices speaking out about the validity of the process will help restore trust and faith in the FDA, which historically has protected the nation against dangerous drugs and treatments.
"Its understandable that some jurisdictions have decided to go the extra mile to earn the publics confidence in the vaccine, she said. I see this as having state and other authorities help regain trust and faith in the FDA processes
Added layers of oversight, however,could further undermine FDAs credibility and public trust in the agency's decisions, some say. Theres a potential more confusion will be created in peoples minds at a dangerous time when the U.S. is approaching 100,000 new COVID-19 cases a day, said Sandra Crouse Quinn,senior associate director of the Maryland Center for Health Equity.
I understand theyre trying to address a concern that this has been a political process, that it has undermined trust for many people, especially communities of color whose trust has been lower already,"she said."But Im not sure this is the way to go about it.
It's important to remember the FDA is a world-class agency that has shown it wont bow to politics, said Lois Privor-Dumm at theJohns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she is director of the adult vaccine program at theInternational Vaccine Access Center.
"They didnt bend to pressure to accelerate approval before elections, which is a good thing," she said. "Theyve brought together independent experts to review this."
The big question iswhat happens if any of these review boards say they do not support the release of a given vaccine.
States dont have the authority to say theyre going to license or not license in their state, so its not clear to me what they would do if they were hesitant," Quinn said. "Would they say, We wont accept this vaccine no matter what FDA does?
The hope, she added, is the groups will endorse the FDA's findings as sound and spread the word.
Theyd say, We trust the FDA, but lets trust and verify. Now weve verified and were ready to go.'"
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is willing to host all MLB games in his state.(Photo: Tania Savayan/The Journal News, via Imagn Content Services, LLC)
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Oct. 30, 2020 2:12 pm ET
Regarding Tunku Varadarajans The Weekend Interview with Martin Kulldorff and Jay Bhattacharya: Epidemiologists Stray From the Covid Herd (Oct. 24): The irony within arguments supporting the Great Barrington Declaration is clearly shown by Mr. Kulldorffs statement regarding the decline in immunization if our current pandemic response continues that Dr. Jay Bhattacharya predicts will lead to a resurgence of pertussis and polio. From where is the herd immunity derived that drastically limited the incidence of these devastating diseases? It has been the direct result of immunization. It wasnt the simple result of natural...
ISTANBUL
The Health Ministry has started to compile the list of those to be given priority in the COVID-19 vaccine, which is expected to be used in Turkey starting from January.
The vaccines will first be made available to the young and healthy group as a result of the findings obtained from the studies conducted considering the vaccine immunity, social immunity and the mutation of the virus, Hrriyet daily reported.
Those over the age of 65 will not be vaccinated in the first place to avoid risk.
Healthcare professionals and police officers are also on the priority list of the ministry.
The ministry creates the list according to the data obtained from the e-Nabz (e-Pulse), an application through which citizens and health professionals get access to health data collected from health institutions.
Some five million doses of vaccine, which will be brought from China, will be applied in two doses where two and a half million people will be vaccinated at each stage, according to daily Hrriyet.
It is also reported that preliminary connections have been made between the authorities and the company regarding the German-U.S. co-produced BioNTech vaccine.
However, there is no clear information about how long the immunity of vaccines will last.
Since the studies were completed faster than they should, there were occasional hesitations about the vaccines, but no major problems are expected, the report said.
The health authorities expect that the outbreak can be overcome in the summer months with scientific studies and measures taken, explaining that such pandemic processes take one and a half years.
Meanwhile, Turkey registered 2,319 new coronavirus patients over the past 24 hours, according to Health Ministry data released on Oct. 29.
On Twitter, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca has said that the current state of the pandemic forces us to slow down our lives.
The minister has also warned Istanbul residents once more not to leave the house unless there is an obligation.
If youre going to be in a crowded environment, consider whether its worth getting the disease, Koca said.
Last week, Koca noted that the number of coronavirus cases in Istanbul, the countrys largest city by population, accounts for 40 percent of all infections in Turkey.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced that when a COVID-19 vaccine in approved it will be free whether you have insurance or not.
With several COVID-19 vaccines under development around the world, many Americans have wondered how much it'll cost to get the immunization once one is approved.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services answered that question this week.
THE QUESTION
Will Americans have to pay a lot for a COVID-19 vaccine, once the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves one?
THE ANSWER
No, it will be free, CMS announced on Wednesday.
WHAT WE FOUND
On Wednesday, CMS said in a news release that Americans wont have to pay out of pocket for a coronavirus vaccine that gains full FDA approval or Emergency Use Authorization. That includes Medicare and Medicaid recipients, people with private insurance -- even those who havent met their deductibles for the year -- and those with no insurance at all.
As a condition of receiving free COVID-19 vaccines from the federal government, providers will be prohibited from charging consumers for administration of the vaccine, the release said.
In a document released Thursday, the World Health Organization showed several vaccines are in Phase 3 development, being given to thousands of people to test their effectiveness and safety.
Four vaccine candidates are currently in large scale Phase 3 trials in the U.S. Pfizer executives said they should have data in early November that shows whether its vaccine effectively prevents coronavirus infections.
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has previously emphasized that any vaccine approved this year would be in "very limited supply" at first. It wouldn't be available to most until summer or fall of 2021.
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I like when predictions of unknowable things come with impossible levels of precision. If youre going to tell me how various U.S. election outcomes will affect the spread between Italian and German government bond yields in 2022, I see no reason to skimp on the decimal places. So imagine my delight with a new pre-election report from UBS that lays naked the worlds financial future with titillating specificity.
There is plenty for partisans on both sides to cheer and to curse. Gross domestic product will fare best, in UBSs view, if Democrats sweep, in part because of the increased chance of big spending packages passing.
That route, however, also produces somewhat higher inflation, and more of a rise in 10-year Treasury yieldswhich are seen rising in all election scenarios. Since higher bond yields compete with stocks for investor affection, stocks do worse under a Democratic sweep than if Joe Biden wins the presidency and if Republicans hold the Senate.
I wont dwell on these things, because theyve been amply covered elsewhere by now, and because again, I dont think theyre particularly knowable. But UBS analysis is interesting for two broad reasons. First, there is no doomsday scenario. The bank has the S&P 500 rising 17.2% through 2022 under the status quo, 23.3% under a Democratic sweep, and 26.2% if Biden wins but the Senate doesnt flip.
Id be delighted with any of those numbers, given the 10-year run weve already had. Vote for candidates you believe will govern well, and let the stock market take care of itself.
Second, UBS predicts that a Covid-19 vaccine, and how quickly it is delivered, has roughly the same pull on cumulative stock-market returns through 2022 as the election outcome.
That is, the banks highest-return forecast by election outcome is nine percentage points higher than its lowest-return one. Meanwhile, the return spread between its optimistic and pessimistic vaccine assumptions is also nine points. Under the optimistic assumption, we will have a vaccine late this year, and we will achieve herd immunity by the end of 2021. Under the pessimistic one, the vaccine doesnt arrive until the end of 2021, and herd immunity takes longer to develop.
I dont put up election-year lawn signs, but if I wanted to make an exception this year, mine might say Pfizer (ticker: PFE), Moderna (MRNA), and AstraZeneca (AZN), plus others in the Covid-19 vaccine race. If you are optimistic about a vaccine, but dont want to pick a drug stock, UBS has an idea. By its math, vaccine hope is already 80% priced into the U.S. stock market, but only 46% priced into U.S. value stocksthere are no decimal places, sorry to say.
If the bank is right, a vote for value stocks could pay off nicely if the lab-coat set has a breakthrough soon.
A wild ride for stocks this year is profiting companies that execute trades. Nasdaq (NDAQ) recently reported a 15% increase in revenue, to $259 million, from what it calls market services, which include stock trading.
Thats good news for its shareholders, of course, but more important is whats going on in a division called information services. There, revenue shot 20% higher last quarter, to $238 million.
The division could soon be Nasdaqs biggest, accounting now for one-third of revenue. It makes money from selling data and analytics to sophisticated traders and crime fighters, and from licensing indexes to fund companies.
There are other business units that charge companies to list their shares on the Nasdaq Stock Market, and that sell financial plumbing to power stock exchanges around the world.
Were really a global technology company that serves the capital markets, says Adena Friedman, who ran Nasdaqs first data operation 20 years ago, and has been CEO since 2017.
One reason Friedman might want Nasdaq to be viewed as a technology seller is that investors are paying handsomely for such companies now. If Nasdaq were merely riding a stock trading boom this year, investors would worry about a fizzle next year. But around two-thirds of revenue now comes from non-trading sources. Nasdaqs forward price/earnings ratio has doubled to 20 over the past eight years.
There are challenges. A technology boom in the 1980s and 90s put Nasdaq and its Silicon Valley stock listings on the map, but it also gave rise to the modern internet, which has lowered barriers to entry for upstart stock exchanges. Fees there could fall as competition rises, which is all the more reason for Nasdaq to push into data and tech.
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Friedman says one of the companys newest products uses artificial intelligence to scan for signs of money laundering.
I asked Friedman how much algorithmic trading influences market movements. It accelerates things, she says, but human sentiment still deserves most of the credit or the blame. What do data buyers do with information about Joe and Sally Savers stock trades? They use it to better position themselves for future trading, and it doesnt leave Joe and Sally worse off on their executions, she says.
Are Robinhood bros driving tech stocks to absurd valuations, in between chest-thumping tweets and swigs of mango hard seltzer?
No, she explains, low bond yields have flattered stocks, and tech stocks stand out for two reasonsbecause fast growth is scarce, and because companies have separated into two classes, based on how vulnerable they are to the virus.
Wall Street predicts a 21% surge in Nasdaqs earnings per share this year, a minimal increase next year, and a 7% increase in 2022. The company has beaten estimates in 19 of the past 20 quarters. Its shares have returned 21% a year over the past decade, eight points better than the S&P 500 index.
Write to Jack Hough at jack.hough@barrons.com. Follow him on Twitter and subscribe to his Barrons Streetwise podcast.
